Local area and wide area network (LANs and WANs) are common place in today's world of high tech, omnipresent information access and communication availability. For example, mobile platforms such as aircraft, cruise ships, trains, buses and other moving vehicles often provide passengers with the capability of connecting to a LAN onboard the mobile platform. The mobile platform LANs typically offer the passenger use of many desirable services such as wireless connections to the Internet and/or remote ground based LANs or WANs. Generally, for a passenger to utilize such services the passenger is required to provide sensitive confidential information such as the passenger's name, credit card information, date of birth, home address and phone number. This confidential information is then generally stored in memory of the LAN and used to authorize the passenger to use the services available via the onboard LAN or authenticate the passenger's authorization, if previously authorized.
However, often times the onboard servers are not secure. That is, the onboard servers are not guarded from unauthorized and undesired physical and/or electronic access when not in use. For example, mobile platform LAN equipment, such as servers and storage devices, is often pulled off the mobile platform and put in a maintenance rack for storage in a low security facility. Thus, the confidential passenger information stored in the LAN memory is potentially vulnerable to unauthorized and undesired access, i.e. hacking. Additionally, such LANs are often vulnerable to being hacked while the LANs are in use. Therefore, the confidential user information is potentially vulnerable even if such user information is merely temporarily provided and not stored within the LAN.
Furthermore, many known LAN systems require that specialized software be loaded on the user's device, e.g. laptop computer, in order for the user to acquire authorization/authentication and access to a desired LAN controlled service. Thus, the user must connect to the LAN, download the specialized software program and then complete the authorization/authentication process. This is cumbersome and undesirable to the user and the LAN provider.
Therefore, it is very desirable to provide implementation of an authorization/authentication process that will not expose a user's private information to any piece of equipment on the LAN. It is further very desirable to provide such a process that will not require specialized authorization software to be loaded on the user's device